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I painted the front room blue. Now, before you think I’m super crazy, it’s a blue I pulled from the fabric wall just past the kitchen. (Wait, what? Fabric wall. Did you know you can turn fabric into wallpaper by applying it to the wall with liquid starch? Suuuuper easy and effective.) So I pulled a blue from the fabric and painted a couple walls in the front room/dining room that blue. And you know what? We like it. I also spruced up the rest of the walls with white, covering the dirty cream that was there to begin. There was also the matter of dying the existing curtains and painting the rods black as a manner of updating. (Empty house photos are from the house listing.)

And now for the big one. The kitchen island. The project I’ve been waiting for since we moved in and lived with the silly oddly-shaped island with built-in indoor grill. We shopped around for cabinets and found that Klearvue cabinets from Menards fit our budget best. They’re cabinets you (*ahem* Dave) assemble yourself with bunches of options for combos. We also knew we wanted butcher block and – again- after shopping around, ordered a piece of butcher block actually marketed as a workshop table top. It saved us hundreds of dollars (even more so because Dave was able to pick it up from a local warehouse to avoid shipping costs) and came in just the right size. And so a couple weekends ago, we demolished (and found a newspaper clipping from 1981) and assembled.

We have the toe kicks left to do and the shiplap to paint and more stools arrive tomorrow but it is usable and we are in love. Our neighbors stopped over the other night to see it and mentioned how – despite the island itself being huge – 3 x 8 feet – it actually makes our kitchen look bigger to be rid of the kidney bean formica island.

This past weekend we welcomed Dave’s sister and her family – two adults and three kids. We had to pull in extra stools but we all ate meals around the island. It was lovely. We also went to the Milwaukee County Zoo where we especially lingered with the flamingos, tiger, and elephants (real and shrubbery).

2 Responses to “House update.”

It looks just like I would imagine you to create. You are really good with color and the idea of so much doing yourself is rewarding in a big way. We are working the garage now and was able to buy a complete kitchen for $150.00 but only took what we really could fit and donated the rest back to resale so when I picked up the desk they had the pieces we could not use all priced individually at a total of $85. It was at a Habitat outlet in Rochester. Hung the hook that were on the wall behind the cabinet up this afternoon and I just hung a picture in the bedroom. Closely as we are gone a lot and are both driving vans for school each day and go to g-kids sports events. Cole, Cade and Addison do keep us busy. Love to hear what your up to. Bet your job is going well also. Marilyn had told me about the fixing things last week but I had not yet read the blog. Awesome.

Welcome!

Thanks for stopping by! I'm Lindsay, a thirty-something pastor who loves to quilt, cook, create, collect gnomes, travel, and write, in addition to a million other life-giving verbs. If you read this - and I hope you do! - it's likely to be a bit unpredictable; probably an odd mix of crazy adventures and random projects with a little emotional venting sneaking in through the cracks. Step into the crazy; it's fun inside.

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